Fishing Of Depleted River Herring Banned For 12th Straight Year

HARTFORD — The state's environmental agency has extended its ban on taking alewives and blueback herring from most inland and marine waters in Connecticut for a 12th year.

The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection's prohibition has been extended until March 31, 2014, when it will be reviewed again, the agency said in a press release Friday.

The ban — originally put in place in April 2002 — has been extended each year because there has been no improvement in the depleted populations of the fish.

"Despite the conservation efforts taken by this agency and others over the past decade, the runs of river herring in Connecticut are still diminished," said DEEP Deputy Commissioner Susan Whalen. "The best available data from this past year indicates that the closure of these fisheries must therefore remain in place."

River herring is a term used collectively to refer to alewife and blueback herring. Both species are anadromous, which means they hatch in freshwater, migrate to the ocean to grow, then return to freshwater to spawn.

There are two main theories on why the population has not replenished itself, said Steve Gephard, supervising fisheries biologist with the Inland Fisheries Division of the DEEP.

One is that the striped bass — a now plentiful species that had been depleted before the 1980s — are eating the herring. But that theory is considered by many to be over simplistic, Gephard said, because a predator is unlikely to eat an entire population and diminish its own food source.

Another theory gaining credence is that the dearth of herring is due to what is called "by-catch," or inadvertent harvesting, of the fish by Atlantic Ocean herring fisheries, said Gephard. The river and sea herring look similar, and river herring will school together in the same areas where the sea species are harvested, he said.

Historically, millions of river herring returned to Connecticut's rivers and streams each year. More than 630,000 blueback herring passed the Holyoke Dam on the Connecticut River in 1985. By 2006, only 21 passed the dam, the agency said.

"For the last 10 years we've really seen no improvement," said Gephard.

DEEP crews started monitoring the herring runs on Friday, gathering information that will be used next March to determine whether to extend the ban again, he said. But even if the population increases this season, lifting the ban is unlikely for 2014.

Despite the 12-year ban, Gephard said DEEP hopes the actions they are taking — such as transplanting adult herring from streams with healthy runs into less populated streams, removing obsolete dams and building fishways that allow fish to migrate past remaining dams — will be successful.